Moon of the Crusted Snow

by Waubgeshig Rice

  Terry took her suggestion and walked outside. The remaining councillors stayed, socializing with band members as they trickled in.

  Earlier that morning, after Evan had returned his plough to the yard, he had adjusted the breaker switches on the power panel to provide lights to the main entrance and to the gym. He had filled the diesel furnace with enough fuel to heat the space where the community was to gather later in the day. Now he sat nearby in case they needed him for anything else.

  “Just gotta wait now, I guess,” Candace said to him.

  Evan adjusted the beak of his blue ball cap and looked down at his feet before asking, “So what’s going on, anyway?”

  She sighed. “We’re not really sure yet. Terry’s gonna ask everyone just to sit tight while we wait for communication to come back and we hear what’s going on with the systems down south.”

  The chairs filled steadily, and finally about a hundred people sat chatting in their winter gear while children chased each other down the aisle and along the painted sidelines on the floor. Evan saw his parents, his older sister Sarah, and her son Ziigwan stroll in. He smiled at them, and the little boy, just a little older than his own son, waved. He noted that Cam was not with them.

  Back at the table, Terry scanned the gym. Relatives, friends, acquaintances, and political enemies sat before them. Governing a community this size, he and the council sometimes had to make decisions that not everyone liked. Some nodded or smiled at him. Others met his gaze without expression. The weathered faces of the dozen or so elders in the crowd analyzed his body language with their chins held high. He nodded at one in particular, Aileen Jones, and she nodded back. He cleared his throat and stood.

  “Boozhoo, mino shkwaa naagweg kina wiya,” he began. “Good afternoon, everybody. Chi-miigwech for coming down here today. As you all know, we’ve been having some problems with power and satellite connections, so we’re here to give you an update. First though, I’d like to call up our elder Aileen to start this meeting with a smudge and a prayer.”

  That was Evan’s cue, and he walked over to Aileen. She was in her late eighties, one of the oldest of their community, and she had difficulty getting around, so Evan offered his arm to help her up. She looked up at him with eyes so dark the pupils were hard to distinguish from the irises. She smiled her sweet slow smile that rippled the lines of her face. Her thin white hair draped the back of her neck loosely, and she mouthed a faint miigwech as she pulled herself to stand. She picked up the medicine bundle on the chair beside her and handed it to Evan.

  Evan reached into the cloth bag, sewn with white, yellow, red, and black material. He felt around for the large abalone shell he knew was inside and pulled it out. The iridescent interior was smooth and gleamed with a swath of subtle pinks and blues. He held the shell upright, its rough exterior nestled in his hand while Aileen’s reached into the medicine bag. Evan could smell the sage before she even grabbed it. The entire gym was silent.

  Aileen pulled out the sticks of sage and motioned for Evan to hold the shell in front of her. She began breaking them into smaller pieces and piled them neatly in the basin of the shell. She wiped the smaller leaves that stuck to her fingers and palms onto the rest of the medicine. It was important to get it all. The sharp herbal aroma soothed Evan. Next Aileen reached for a box of matches and a fan of eagle feathers that she handed to Evan.

  Her wrinkled hands trembled as she pushed open the cardboard box for a match. Her fingers rattled among the matchsticks, and Evan worried she wouldn’t be able to pinch one free. But she did and brought the red head of the match swiftly to the coarse side of the box. The loud pop of combustion resounded through the first rows of gym, and the sulphur smell briefly wiped out the sage’s scent.

  Aileen brought the flickering orange light under the carefully piled sage in the shell, and the medicine caught fire. She let it burn for a few seconds before blowing it out. Thick grey smoke billowed from the shell in Evan’s hand, and the unmistakable calming smell of smudge slowly dispersed through the gym. Aileen shook out the match and placed it carefully in the shell. The elder moved through the ceremony as if this were muscle memory passed to her through countless generations.

  “Aambe,” Aileen said, motioning towards her torso with both of her hands.

  Evan carefully waved the feathers across the burning sage, moving more smoke through the room. Aileen cupped her hands over the smudge and started to guide it over her body. She washed it over her head, up and down her arms, down her torso, her legs, and then turned so Evan could smudge her back and shoulders.

  Many in the crowd watched intently, awaiting their turn. Others were skeptical, and a smaller few took offence to the ritual, though it was an integral part of Anishinaabe spirituality. It represented a cleansing of the spirit, and the ceremony was believed to clear the air of negativity. It had become protocol to open any community event or council meeting with a smudge.

  This protocol had once been forbidden, outlawed by the government and shunned by the church. When the ancestors of these Anishinaabe people were forced to settle in this unfamiliar land, distant from their traditional home near the Great Lakes, their culture withered under the pressure of the incomers’ Christianity. The white authorities displaced them far to the north to make way for towns and cities.

  But people like Aileen, her parents, and a few others had kept the old ways alive in secret. They whispered the stories and the language in each other’s ears, even when they were stolen from their families to endure forced and often violent assimilation at church-run residential schools far away from their homes. They had held out hope that one day their beautiful ways would be able to reemerge and flourish once again.

  “Okay,” Aileen spoke softly to Evan, “your turn.” He handed her the shell and the fan and dipped his hands into the smoke to bring it close to himself. He turned so that his back was to her, and let her disperse the medicine up and down his body. From behind him, she tapped each of his shoulders gently with the fan, and he turned back to face her and took the medicine from her hands. He walked clockwise around the gym, fanning the shell to push the smoke into the air and towards the seated townspeople. He then took a spot over to one side of the council table where people who wanted to smudge could line up.

  Aileen turned to the crowd and spoke. “Boozhoo, Zhaawshgogiiizhgokwe n’dizhnakaaz,” she said. “Wawashkesh n’dodem.” After introducing herself in Anishinaabemowin, she addressed the crowd in English. “Good afternoon, my relatives.” Her quiet, authoritative voice echoed through the large room. “Thank you all for coming here today.” As an elder, she had the full attention of everyone in the room. Any eyes that might have rolled during the smudge were nonetheless now fixed on her. She was everyone’s auntie, even if they weren’t related by blood.

  “Winter is here,” she continued. “Maybe it came a little earlier than we all expected. It’s the time when the trees go to sleep. The bears go to sleep. We all rest. And then we will be reborn in the spring. But it’s important to make sure we’re ready. Now is the time to help your relatives prepare their winter homes. Make sure they have enough food. Enough wood. Enough medicine to make it through the dark season.”

  Heads nodded in the crowd. Evan tried to read the faces, people no doubt thinking of their own winter inventory and what they would need. Some looked slightly panicked.

  “So I’m going to offer a prayer,” she smiled. “I’m gonna ask the Great Spirit to take care of us this winter. We’re gonna need it.” She smiled reassuringly and began to speak in her first language once again, introducing herself once more in Anishinaabemowin, and then giving thanks for health and all the other gifts from the Creator.

  Aileen finished with a strong miigwech, and a smattering of responses rolled through the audience as they thanked the elder for opening the meeting. Candace helped her back to her chair while Evan finished smudging the last few people lined up in front of
him.

  That was Terry’s cue. He cleared his throat, wiped his palms on the thighs of his jeans, and stood up. He thanked Aileen for the prayer, and Evan for the smudge. He then thanked everyone who showed up to the all-members meeting.

  “As you all know by now,” he started, “we’re having some issues with the infrastructure here in the community. If you didn’t know, you must be living under a rock.” The feeble joke got a chuckle out of some people, and he relaxed a bit. He pushed it. “Anyone who’s still living under a rock is buried under three feet of snow by now!” Louder laughter followed. A hint of tension lingered in some stoic faces, but most of it had dissipated.

  His voice became more serious. “Last Wednesday, our satellite service went out. That knocked out TV and internet. Most of you noticed. We got a lot of visitors down here at the band office that day. Here we just thought you were all coming to wish Walter a happy birthday,” he giggled and looked down at his cousin, and the crowd chuckled again. “These things happen, so we gave it a day. Sometime in there, the phone lines went down for some reason too. When all those things still weren’t working on Thursday, we tried to call our service provider down in Gibson with our off-grid sat phone. But that wasn’t working either. We figured we’d wait another day just to see if it came on.

  “Then sometime overnight Thursday, the power went out. It’s the first time we’ve lost power like that since we connected to the grid three years ago. We sent our guys to check the nearest transformers. They looked fine but they’re dead. There’s nothing coming in from the dam. And because we have no communication, we’ve had no updates.”

  Parkas rustled as people whispered to neighbours and family. From their place at the front of the room, Terry and the councillors could see the anxiety building in the gym.

  “Don’t worry, we’re confident it’ll come back on,” he quickly uttered. “They spent a hundred million dollars getting this line to us. The longer we go without power, the worse it’ll look on the province. So you can be sure there are people down in the big smoke and at the dam working on this right now. We just don’t know exactly what the problem is yet.”

  The rest of the councillors sat looking out at their relatives and friends. Each attempted to appear confident in the uneasy confusion.

  “On Saturday, we turned on the generators so you could put the lights and heat back on,” Terry reminded them. “We wanted to give you a chance to keep working on whatever you still needed to do before winter. Stuff like arranging your food in your freezers and bringing wood inside. Looks like we did that just in time too. We’re keeping the generators on for the time being, but we still need you to conserve energy. Only turn on lights in the room you’re in. Don’t use your electric oven if you don’t have to. If you’re gonna watch DVDs, please do it sparingly.

  “It’s been a long time since the generators ran all winter. The diesel tanks are only half full. We’re supposed to get some new shipments in once the service road is iced over for the truckers. We ordered maintenance supplies last month and that delivery is supposed to happen sometime in the next couple weeks. Same time as the next food truckload for the Northern. But hopefully by then, we’ll be back on the grid.”

  “What the fuck, Terry?” a voice shouted from the back. Evan’s much older cousin Mark angrily pulled his toque off his head and stood up. “So we just gotta wait around and hope this shit returns to normal?”

  “We’re just asking you to be patient, Mark,” the chief replied. The lights shimmered off Mark’s scalp that showed through his thinning brown hair. “The plans are in place. The generators are running. That’s what they’re there for. Emergencies. They’re doing what they’re supposed to right now.”

  A soft murmur emanated from the crowd. Evan couldn’t tell if they were appeased or confused, or both.

  “So that’s why we want you to conserve,” Terry continued. “At regular usage, we estimate that we’ll run out of diesel by February. We don’t think that’ll happen anyway. But to be on the safe side, don’t use too much power.”

  The crowd’s restlessness grew. They had come for answers and were getting very few, only directions and orders. He’s losing them, thought Evan.

  “So, because of that,” Terry explained, “the school and the band office will be closed for the rest of the week. We’ll do our part here too. There will be rotating staff to help with any problems. Public works is on duty all week. Until phone service is back, you’ll just have to come down here and ask if you need or want to know something. In the meantime, keep your wood stoves and furnaces going. We want you to stay warm. We also don’t want your pipes to freeze.”

  Terry wrapped up and Walter took over, explaining the services that would still be operational, like ploughing, home visits for maintenance, the grocery store, the water treatment plant, and the health station for emergency medication. The crowd thinned as the meeting wound down. When it came time for questions before wrapping up, only about a dozen people remained, scattered behind Aileen, who sat stoically in the front row. Her poise appeased Evan. He noticed an easy smile on her face. She’s lived through it all, he thought. If she’s not worried, then we shouldn’t be.

  Nine

  The leftover stew simmered on the stovetop. Evan stirred it with a wooden spoon as Nicole looked over his shoulder and nodded her approval.

  He opened the fridge, absurdly pleased that the inside light still flashed on and absently checked the shelves. There was a big tub of margarine on the top shelf, beside a jug of nearly expired milk. Milk had become slightly cheaper with the opening of the service road and now it wasn’t always condensed milk on their table.

  “I should probably go to the store,” he declared, staring into the fridge. “Looks like we need more carrots. And potatoes. Could use some milk too. Anything you can think of?”

  “Anything in cans. Get eggs if they have some too.”

  “If I miss anything you can just go back tomorrow. It’ll be another reason to get the kids out of the house.”

  The snow had let up during the meeting the day before. The roads were clear but slippery in spots. The sky remained overcast and the horizon blended with the snow in the gaps between the trees. Evan noticed snowmobile tracks in the ditches along the side of the road.

  He turned right at the outdoor rink and didn’t notice any activity there. Maybe I’ll check with Walter to see if he wants us to flood it for the kids, he thought. The homes on the route leading out of the community to the service road were built much more tightly together. A high snowbank had built up at the end of the row of homes. Heavily bundled children climbed and slid down the snow on garbage bags and plastic sheets. Evan pushed down the window button to hear their chatter and laughter. It was hard to recognize the little faces concealed by toques and scarves, but he waved enthusiastically and they all waved back. He heard a distinct “uncle, uncle!” but couldn’t see or make out who it was. The kids aren’t worried, he reminded himself.

  At the end of this road was the Northern Trading Post, owned by the biggest grocery chain in the country, who had a monopoly in First Nations in the North. Not only was this general store the only outlet for food, it also supplied all the hardware, household supplies, and other domestic necessities. While prices were better than they had been before the road was built, they were still outrageous compared to what people paid in the South. A two-litre carton of milk usually cost ten dollars. Sometimes it went up to fifteen.

  Evan was surprised to see that the parking lot was packed. Trucks, cars, and snowmobiles were lined up sloppily in front of the store. He saw Nicole’s cousin Chuck lumber out carrying a cardboard box nearly twice as wide as his frame, and he was a big man.

  Evan watched Chuck put the box in the back of his truck, hop in the cab, and back out of there in a hurry. He got to the front door just as Isaiah was coming through with bulging plastic bags. He looked serious.

  “H
ey, shouldn’t you be at work, Indian?” Evan joked, as he nudged the shoulder of his friend’s red plaid lumberjack jacket.

  Isaiah cracked a weak smile. “Permanent vacation, Nishnaab!” he replied. “Didn’t you know?” His smile faded. “Hey, you should probably get in there. There’s not much left.”

  “What the hell is going on?”

  “I dunno, I guess people are starting to panic. My mom came by my place about an hour ago saying it was mayhem down here.”

  “Fuck, really? I didn’t expect this.”

  “Me neither. I guess we didn’t do a good job convincing people to relax yesterday.”

  “Does Terry know? What about Walter?”

  “I heard Terry was down here earlier asking people to take it easy. Obviously it didn’t work.”

  “Goddamn it.”

  The front door thrust open again and Sarah Whitesky blew past Isaiah and Evan.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Evan said. “What kind of snobby Indian are you, not even recognizing your little bro?”

  She stopped suddenly. “Oh shit, sorry Ev,” she said. “I didn’t even see you there!” Sarah’s glasses concealed much of her expression but Evan looked closely and noticed the tension around her eyes.

  “So what’s the rush?” he asked.

  “I dunno,” she replied. “I just heard everyone was buying up everything down here. I didn’t wanna miss out.”

  “There’s supposed to be another truck coming in a couple of weeks.”

  “Yeah, but at this point, no one knows that for sure,” his sister asserted.

  “Fuck sakes.”

  “Bro, people aren’t as prepared as you,” Isaiah said bluntly. Frustrated, Evan looked again at the line of vehicles hastily gathered in front of the building. A few more came down the road as people rushed out of the store holding boxes and bags.